The cold roughness of cement against his cheek, a curiously dull and imprecise pain across the entire back of his skull, like a nascent headache that couldn’t commit to forming. Had he lost consciousness? Had time passed—minutes, or even hours—since someone had crept up behind him in the darkness and bashed him over the head? Or had he only been momentarily stunned by the blow, and even now someone was waiting nearby, watching him, readying for a repeat assault?
He froze in place, sprawled facedown on the sidewalk, and organized his thoughts against the mounting wave of adrenaline-fueled panic. He was okay. He was alone, he was pretty sure he was alone, because surely if someone was planning on hitting him again, they would have done it by now.
He got to his feet. Carefully, delicately, bones protesting every move. He couldn’t see anything, he’d lost the flashlight, but the world around him swirled and shifted with his every movement. Standing upright was a minor triumph.
The top of his head grazed something, which sent another spike of panic through him, until it dawned on him what it was. A low-hanging branch from the quince tree out front, a branch he ducked under every day on his walk to work. He reached up and touched it, the feel of the bark reassuring under his fingertips. Okay, then. He hadn’t been attacked. In the darkness, he’d risen too fast, bonked his head on the branch, and knocked himself out.
He moved toward his building, shuffling his feet against the sidewalk to avoid tripping again, hands outstretched. He touched the security gate, iron and chipped paint beneath his fingers. He hadn’t shut it all the way when he’d hurried in the direction of the scream, which was good, because… crap, the pockets of his sweatpants were empty, which meant he’d lost his keys when he fell. With a sinking feeling, he navigated his way up the stairs to the second floor.
He hadn’t locked his apartment door when he’d gone to check on Mariposa. Good news. He wouldn’t be spending the night on the disemboweled sofa in the swimming pool. He’d look for his keys as soon as it was light outside…
There was someone in his living room.
Someone was sitting in the armchair against the far wall. Even without any light, he could see his—her?—silhouette, an almost imperceptibly denser blackness than the blackness of his living room. Vish froze in the doorway.
“Who are you?” he asked.
No response. No movement.
He was an idiot. There was no one in his apartment, just like no one had attacked him. Nothing more than a trick of the shadows. Still, it took him a moment, kind of a long moment, before he summoned enough nerve to walk to the armchair, extend a (trembling, maybe) hand into the darkness to touch the upholstered chair back, and confirm no one was there.
Yeah, he was an idiot. Nothing more than that. It’d been a long, strange night, and his imagination was running amuck. His head hurt, he was deeply confused, and he had to be at work in a few hours. He went to bed.